I have noticed that when I attend international conferences related to computer science education, I am very often asked to explain the curriculum in Japan. Therefore, I decided to prepare English-translated materials in advance that we can refer to on such occasions.
This page compiles information in English about the Japanese curriculum of computer science. Since the content on this page is managed in a GitHub repository, I would appreciate it if you could submit any questions as Issues and any suggestions for improvement as Pull Requests.
The learning content in Japanese kindergarten is defined by the national curriculum (幼稚園教育要領).
Computer science education is probably not explicitly addressed in kindergarten.
The learning content in Japanese elementary school is defined by the national curriculum (小学校学習指導要領).
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The learning content in Japanese junior high school is defined by the national curriculum (中学校学習指導要領).
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The learning content in Japanese high school is defined by the national curriculum (高等学校学習指導要領).
The national curriculum defines two subjects for general high schools (高等学校 普通科): “Informatics I (情報Ⅰ)” and “Informatics II (情報Ⅱ)”.
Informatics I is a compulsory subject, and all students in general high schools are required to take it.
In contrast, Informatics II is an elective subject and is offered in only about 15% of general high schools. Moreover, in many cases, it is positioned as one option within a broader elective group. As a result, only about 2.3% of all general high school students actually take Informatics II. (source)
There is no national curriculum that prescribes the educational content at the university level. As a result, curricula vary from one university to another.
The Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) has published the “Curriculum Standard J17.”
Originally, IPSJ released the “Curriculum Standard J07” in 2007. J07 was based on ACM/IEEE-CS CC2001-CC2005 guidelines, but it was revised to reflect the specific context of informatics education in Japan. In particular, it defined six areas: Computer Science (J07-CS), Information Systems (J07-IS), Software Engineering (J07-SE), Computer Engineering (J07-CE), Information Technology (J07-IT), and General Education in Informatics (J07-GE).
“General Education in Informatics (一般情報教育)” appears to be a system that is relatively unique to Japan. At many universities, all first-year students, regardless of their major, are required to take one informatics course. These courses fall under General Education in Informatics. The content varies widely across institutions: some focus on how to use the university’s LMS or office software, while others include programming.
After a decade, given the significant changes in technology, J17 underwent a comprehensive revision. In particular, a draft of a cross-cutting curriculum standard on cybersecurity, J17-CyberSecurity, was added. There were also discussions about adding a curriculum standard for the field of data science.
My comment: In practice, I am not aware of any universities that have explicitly constructed their curricula in direct alignment with J17.